On July 2, 2009, the Executive Yuan finally turned their dreams into reality. It gave final approval to a plan that would make Taipei County a super municipality. In addition, it allowed for Kaohsiung County and Kaohsiung City to merge into one entity, and become another super municipality. The same treatment was accorded to Tainan County and City, and to Taichung County and City.
No doubt, the actions by the Executive Yuan will have far-reaching consequences. The political and administrative landscape in Taiwan now looks entirely different than it did only a few weeks ago. Financial resources will be redistributed. Power, too, will devolve, as the central government relinquishes some of its rights and duties, and transfers them to local governments.
But many questions remain. More than one half of the population of Taiwan now lives under special municipalities, leading some to wonder whether there is even anything that special anymore about super municipalities. It is not clear, at the same time, if those living outside these municipalities will receive fewer resources than they did before, if their revenues will be siphoned off by “the supers.” Even many citizens of Taiwan are not sure what the changes mean, not to mention foreign observers.
To help put all this in perspective, “Taiwan Today” sought out the views of Shiau Chyuan-jenq, a professor of political science at National Taiwan University in Taipei, and a long-time observer of the structure of Taiwanese politics.
Shiau began by separating the question of special municipalities into two broad categories. There is the question of how the changes will play out at the domestic level, which Shiau calls the “micro” level. A “micro level analysis attempts to explain to what extent this policy will contribute to Taiwan’s overall national development domestically,” he explained.
Then there is also the question of how things will develop at the international, or “macro” level. On the macro level of analysis, according to Shiau, one should consider how Taiwan “repositions its economic and political role in the post-Cold War Era, at both a regional and an international level.”
At the micro level, according to Shiau, the changes in administrative structure were long overdue. Since 1957, the nation’s political system has not changed, while the population has increased by 13 million. Several now populous regional administrations felt slighted, and rightly so, as the two existing special municipalities—Taipei and Kaohsiung cities—received the lion’s share of budgetary revenues.
Additionally, Shiau said, “the financial, personnel, and health care systems between the central and local governments” were out of joint, making for a complicated bureaucracy.
Inefficiencies began to creep into the system, while the nation as a whole struggled to maintain the old way of doing things. It was an outdated, broken system that did not and could not address present-day concerns, one that had long outlived its usefulness. “Given Taiwan’s relatively small size,” Shiau said, the administrative structure was “disproportionately complicated.” This made it impossible to bring out the special characteristics of each of the nation’s distinctive regions.
Thus changes to the system were necessary, in Shiau’s view. Indeed, the July 2 decisions were not made abruptly, but were instead the natural outcome of a historical evolution. The general demand for change had been in the air for some time, as has been noted.
On April 3, 2009 the Legislature responded to popular will by passing a revised amendment to the Local Government Act, according to which, cities and counties with a combined population of over 1.25 million and with special needs for regional development can apply to integrate and upgrade their status as special municipalities. The final decision as to whether the applications would be approved, however, was left to the Executive Yuan.
The process of changing Taiwan’s political structure has only just begun, Shiau observed. He believes that the mergers and upgrades allowed by the Executive Yuan are only “a prelude to the government’s goal of adjusting Taiwan’s administrative districts and local reforms.”
On the macro level, Shiau contends that Taiwan’s strategic location within both the regional and the global context have changed since the end of the Cold War. The most powerful force shaping the new, post-Cold War world, he contends, is the development of regional integration, or the emergence of regionalism.
“From this perspective, the drastic geographic earthquake triggered by regionalism has led to economic diversity and diversification in Asia, to such events as the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and China’s cooperation with its neighbors on security and economic issues,” Shiau believes.
Viewed from such a perspective, it is clear that Taiwan “had no choice but to remap its administrative districts, in order to boost the island’s international competitiveness.”
He continued: “Given China’s growing economic dominance, along with fierce competition from Japan and South Korea, restructuring reform became an urgent issue that the government simply could not get away with not addressing.”
To support his view, Shiau points to the outcome of the mergers. One result is that in addition to the two original super municipalities to the north and south of Taiwan, an additional one has been created in the center, through the merger of Taichung County and City. This was necessary, Shiau said, because the two older municipalities could no longer serve as the only hubs to Northeast and Southeast Asia; a third, additional transit point was needed, and the Taichung area filled the void.
“From this point of view, in light of the mega city’s bigger role in today’s domestic and global economic situation, the merger of Taichung City and Taichung County may well strike a balance in development between the North and South and sharpen the competitive edge of the greater Taichung area as well,” he said.
Critics of the Executive Yuan’s decision have expressed concern that it would exacerbate current inequalities. For instance, Tsai Ing-wen, chairwoman of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, has said that she fears the government’s decision will increase the gap between the rich and the poor, creating one area where the population enjoys better government services, and another where residents end up as second-class citizens.
“Upgrades and mergers closely involve the well-being of the public,” Tsai pointed out. “The issue should be examined in a professional way in order to benefit each area impartially while keeping the national interest in mind.”
Other critics maintain that the changes were politically motivated. They claim the Executive Yuan’s decision came with a hidden agenda which was designed to facilitate the ruling Kuomintang’s year-end magistrate and mayoral election campaigns.
“The approval of Taipei County’s upgrade is meant to enable incumbent KMT magistrate Chou Hsi-wei’s re-election bid,” DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang said, adding that the postponement of elections scheduled for the four newly merged municipalities before the end of this year was unconstitutional and undemocratic.
According to the revision, the county elections in the areas approved for mergers or upgrading would be delayed by one to Dec. 20, 2010.
Some also feel that the government has acted too hastily. While Shiau concedes that the government could have deliberated more thoroughly on the matter, he is not overly concerned, convinced as he is that the concerns of critics can be “addressed through amendments to the Local Government Act, the Law Governing the Allocation of Government Revenues and Expenditures, and the Administrative Division Law.”
To conclude, then, the July 2 decision by the Executive Yuan will have ramifications for Taiwan on the local, regional, and international levels. The way ahead may not be entirely clear, but its general direction is: towards a more rational structure of government that more closely reflects majority representation, and towards a system that will make Taiwan more competitive in the new world order.
Write to Chiayi Ho at chiayi@mail.gio.gov.tw